Abstract

Reactions that involve the direct and sudden removal of a pair of like or unlike nucleons from a fast projectile beam by a light target nucleus are considered. Specifically, we study the three two-nucleon removal channels from 12C that populate final states in the 10Be, 10B, and 10C reaction residues. The calculated two-nucleon removal cross sections and the residue momentum distributions are compared with available high-energy data at 250, 1050, and 2010 MeV per nucleon, i.e., data that are inclusive with respect to the bound final states of the residues. The measured np removal cross sections only are significantly greater than the values calculated, suggesting that the reaction mechanism observes enhanced np spatial correlations compared to those present in the shell-model wave functions.